Angler Stephen Perkins, 52, got more than he bargained for when he hauled the fish on board his boat 'Serenity' off Lundy Island, Devon.

Blue shark: Stephen Perkins is the first person to be bitten by a blue shark off the British coast

As he was preparing to unhook the fish, it sank its teeth into his wrist leaving him needing re-constructive surgery. It has earned him an unlikely place in history as the first documented case of a man being bitten by a Blue Shark off British waters.

Such was the blood loss that an RAF Sea King helicopter had to be scrambled to take him to North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple on Saturday where he was finally released today.

Although the incident could not be treated as an "unprovoked" attack, it is believed to be the first documented case of a Blue Shark - a common migratory visitor to British waters - biting someone in this way.

However, experts said it was possible there could have been similar "attacks" in the past which went unreported during the 1950s and 1960s when as many as 6,000 Blue Sharks a year were caught off the coast of Cornwall alone each year.advertisement

While still common off the west coast of England and Wales, Blue Sharks - which can grow to 13ft long - have seen their numbers drastically reduced by overfishing in recent decades, with only about 200 reeled in last year in the same area.

Mr Perkins, from Glamorgan, south Wales, is a regular shark angler and was making the most of sunny weather conditions on Saturday.

"We don't harm the sharks when we hook them, we just take a picture and put them back in the water," he explained.

"But the one I got was pretty lively and having put his jaw around my wrist then let go.

"The scariest bit, to be honest, was going up in a helicopter.

"It won't put me off fishing again but I will remember to pick the shark up by the blunt end in future."

Douglas Herdson, 61, information officer at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, Devon, said: "This is the first attack by a Blue Shark in this country, but it is very unlikely to be unprovoked."

But Richard Pierce, chairman of the Shark Trust, said: "Between the 1950s and 1960s the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain by themselves caught nearly 20,000 Blue Sharks - believe me that would not have been bite-free.

"I was bitten by a porbeagle shark, which is a first cousin of the Great White, just last year.

"I was taking a hook out of its mouth, what was it going to do kiss me?"

He said there had only been four documented cases of shark "attacks" off British waters in the past, the most serious being when a basking shark unintentionally overturned a 15ft boat in the Firth of Clyde in 1937, causing three people to drown.

An 18-year-old German was once bitten on the arm by a small shark he was trying to release from a net in Scotland and needed hospital treatment after the wound turned septic.

"There has never been a proper, real shark attack in British waters and this is not a shark attack," Mr Pierce said.

There have, however, been several people injured by sharks on land including a landlady in Kent who was hit by a set of shark jaws which fell off the wall of her pub and a man whose arm was trapped inside the jaws of a dead shark he was transporting on ice after he stopped his van suddenly sending the carcass flying through the air, snapping its jaws shut on his arm.